In the manufacture of certain furniture components such as table and chair legs, it has been the customary practice in the woodworking industry to rough cut pieces of wood in a certain configuration and then clamp such rough cut pieces between headstock and tailstock assemblies of a programmed CNC machine for carving a finished pattern on the pieces. In doing so, because of the programmed sequence of motions of the working tool of the machine, typically a router bit, it is preferable if not essential that the rough cut pieces sequentially loaded onto the machine not only be similarly configured but be oriented in the same position on the machine.
Typically, a solid piece of wood or possibly piece of wood made up of several pieces of wood glued together is rough cut to minimize the amount of carving by the machine. Such pieces generally are rough cut on a band saw to provide a pair of angularly displaced surfaces running the lengths thereof, usually 90.degree. apart, which provide reference surfaces for the carving operation. To properly execute the carving operation on the machine, such rough cut workpieces must consistently be positioned in the same orientation.
It thus has been found to be desirable to provide a carving machine in which a plurality of similarly configured workpieces may be sequentially positioned in a selected orientation on the machine to accommodate a program of sequential motions of a working tool of the machine and thus provide a final component having a desired configuration.